if you still love me

about artist

Lucie Smailes

There are a number of ways to look at, and interpret, what is going on in my work.

What is immediately obvious is my almost archaeological obsession for unearthing, gathering and sifting through the deposited sediments of childhoods long since left behind by unknown adults. At times I feel I am in the process of fitting together the cracked shards of the past together in a way that makes sense of how and why our culture operates in the way that it does. I am fascinated by how we become who we are in all our tangled, joyful, complexity.

My work is not a nostalgic stroll through a Disney World of comfortable memorabilia but rather I use my practice to explore and examine aspects of human experience, which tell a different more disturbing and ultimately more authentic tale.

This is not new territory. I am following the breadcrumb path laid out by Hansel and Gretel on their way through a surrealist wood to the gingerbread house where dreams are made.

I am particularly fascinated by the 1950's post war era and the ephemera produced at that time. It is not just that these artefacts are pleasing, although I do take joy in the objects, it is more that there is something compelling about the way in which, during the 50's, the family became the focus of changes whose impact still resonates. Advertising, consumerism and the rigid reinforcing of gender stereotypes played out across an artificially constructed domestic landscape bleeding with colour.